


afterimage

by smallblueandloud



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 13:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14672112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallblueandloud/pseuds/smallblueandloud
Summary: He sees her, sometimes.





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**Author's Note:**

> this was written ages ago, and posted on tumblr at smallblueandloud. come visit to say hello or rant about rtd who!

He sees her, sometimes.

Well, he says “sees.” He doesn’t quite see her. After all, he can’t do that anymore

_(a treacherous part of his mind whispers something about metacrises and beaches and parallel universes)_

but he knows she’s there, watching, helping. All there is to see is the gold that is so, so familiar, and reminds him of Daleks and game shows and screaming because there’s nothing left living for.

_(“All that is, all that was, all that ever could be.”)_

She saved him. When she became a goddess

_(the only deity that Captain Jack ever prays to)_

she saw his life and everything in it and she fixed it – did what she could to give him more of those wonderful days when no one dies.

_(“Everyone lives, Rose! Just once, everyone lives!”)_

Sometimes she puts the right person in the right place at the right time, trips up a Cyberman, or changes the course of bullets.

He heard that her song sang Sarah Jane to her final rest, being there for her when he wasn’t. He knows that she does the same thing for Jack, over and over.

_(and over and over and over and he can’t help feeling guilty for things out of his control)_

In his darkest moments, stuck in a shuttle on a radioactive planet of diamonds, facing Daleks in New York, or in a darkened TARDIS on a cloud with no one, the gold sparks are there, in the corner of his eye, making sure he doesn’t do something completely stupid.

_(He usually does anyway.)_

_(When he hears about a leaf that made an impossible girl possible, he knows that she made that happen, too.)_

After all, she loves him, said so herself, and he almost said it back -

_(“And I suppose, if it’s my last chance to say it, Rose Tyler—“)_

She would want him to take care of himself, but since he won’t,

_(can’t)_

she does for him.

_(“I want you safe. My Doctor.”)_

Of course, he never really thanked her. Selfish, lonely, old man, he is.

Too bad she couldn’t fix that.


End file.
